Thanks to the excitement of the soccer at Euro 2008, many England fans have come to the realization that the tournament is better off without them, writes Oliver Holt. Who knew?

"Being rubbish never felt so good," he writes. "Maybe it's because England aren't there in Austria and Switzerland that it seems to be such an uplifting festival of football. Maybe it's because we're not spending the early summer preoccupied with our national pastime of beating ourselves up about how useless we are."

There's no agonizing over healing metatarsals or whether the wives and girlfriends should be housed with the players. No worries that England fans are going to smash up every bar in Vienna and Zurich. "It's been so good that people are calling it the best tournament for a generation." And, concludes Holt, "they're right."